Recently, the need to downsize various electronic devices makes it necessary to downsize the electronic components incorporated in the devices and improve the performance thereof. Also in multi-layered ceramic electronic components, such as multi-layered ceramic capacitors, it is strongly required to increase the number of layers and make the laminated unit thinner.
When a multi-layered ceramic electronic component as typified by a multi-layered ceramic capacitor is to be manufactured, ceramic powders, a binder such as an acrylic system resin, a butyral resin or the like, a plasticizing agent such as a phthalate ester, glycol, adipate ester, phosphate ester or the like, and an organic solvent such as toluene, methyl ethyl ketone, acetone or the like are mixed and dispersed, thereby preparing a dielectric paste for a ceramic green sheet.
The dielectric paste is then applied onto a support sheet made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polypropylene (PP) or the like using an extrusion coater, a gravure coater or the like to form a coating layer and the coating layer is heated to dryness, thereby fabricating a ceramic green sheet.
Further, a conductive powder of nickel or the like and a binder are dissolved into a solvent such as terpineol, thereby preparing a conductive paste and the thus prepared conductive paste is printed on the ceramic green sheet in a predetermined pattern using a screen printing machine and dried, thereby forming an electrode layer.
When the electrode layer has been formed, the ceramic green sheet on which the electrode layer is formed is peeled off from the support sheet to form a multi-layered unit including the ceramic green sheet and the electrode layer. Then, a ceramic green chip is formed by laminating a desired number of the multi-layered units to form the laminated body, pressing the laminated body and dicing the laminated body.
Finally, the binder is removed from the green chip, the green chip is baked and an external electrode is formed, thereby completing a multi-layered ceramic electronic component such as a multi-layered ceramic capacitor.
At present, the need to downsize electronic components and improve the performance thereof makes it necessary to set the thickness of the ceramic green sheet determining the spacing between layers of a multi-layered ceramic capacitor to be equal to or smaller than 3 μm or 2 μm and to laminate three hundred or more multi-layered units each including a ceramic green sheet and an electrode layer.